Near Shore Diawa Product Test/Shoot for Goliaths-Jewfish

I met up with award winning photographer Doug Stamm to get into a few goliaths and do some product testing with Diawa. Great guy with a great attitude. http://www.stammphoto.com/about.cfm

We went out a few miles off bonita beach. I used a "heavy duty" saltist rod with a Saltiga Reel with 150lb power pro. I've never been a huge fan with Diawa. I broke their rod on the first fish.. Go figure.. The Saltiga reel however was legite. Incredible drag pressure. The reel was a Saltist LD30 2 speed. I don't know if I would personally spend that much on a 30 but it is strong.

Bait was thick. Threads and Pilchards were getting mauled by 18inch spanish macs. Dropped a few live Spanish down and you know the rest. Also, messing around with a white jig produced a 30lb cobia follow. No commitment on that fish. After we caught a few goliaths I played around with the cudas on my 4000 size reel which never gets old.

Rods

Diawa Rods are trying to keep up, I looked at ther jigging rods and was quite dissapointed. They tried mimicking Shimano which I am not fan of either. I actyally bought a New Penn jigging rod, 6'0" fast action tip can handle jigs up to 8 OZ's for $129

I had a bunch of Saltist reels, 30, 40 and 50 H 6.3:1 gear ratio, for the price they are pretty good, great for grouper. But I did some horse trading and got Saltiga 40 and a Saltiga 35 2 speed, high gear 6.3:1, low gear 3:1 and they are pure beast and smooth.

Have the 2 speed on Calstar H800 , 7"10" I use in the Keys, having a second one made in 7 Ft, still have some friends that spin rods.

Not enough leverage any furthur down on the grip. It may cause stress but it snapped mid tip not in the power portion at the base of the rod.

I have a 80 to 100 lb Gator Glass blank on my rack if you want to put something together for pulling monsters off the bottom , I bought it a couple of years ago on a deal for another customer in naples , it is a beefstick